Mapping the most effective AI technologies for marketing across the customer lifecycle

AI technology is a hot topic in marketing at the moment, but AI is a broad term covering a wide range of different technologies. Artificial intelligence means any technology that seeks to mimic human intelligence, which covers a huge range of capabilities such as voice and image recognition, machine learning techniques and semantic search. Marketers like to wax lyrical about the latest exciting technologies and bang on about AI for image recognition, speech recognition, preventing data leaks, or even targeting drones at remote communities. All well and good. But how are marketers supposed to do anything with that information? It's just hype, you can't implement it.
That's why in our AI and Machine Learning briefing for members we have identified fifteen artificial intelligence techniques that businesses of all sizes can implement, rather than techniques which only major tech…

Voice technology will be huge in 2019, with smart speakers driving this revolution. Let’s look at some of the key ways voice can boost marketing activity and engage audiences

A bit of background

Voice technology uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI to provide a more intuitive way of interacting with devices including smart speakers. Although the underlying technology has been in development for decades, it is only with recent advances in computing that it has been practical and reliable.
Now let’s take a brief look at the main smart speaker platforms.
[si_guide_block id="70611" title="Download our Free Resource – Essential digital marketing tools" description="This guide gives Free members a preview of the 30 categories of digital marketing tools you should be using for your marketing."/]

Amazon Alexa

Currently the most popular smart speakers with global sales of 100 million devices. Alexa technology is available in a wide range of devices from the entry level Echo Dot through…

If you're involved in marketing strategy development, you will be constantly making judgements and doubtless arguing with colleagues about which digital technology innovations are most relevant to your organization. In this article, we compare different examples of Gartner's well-established Hype Cycle tools which serve to highlight the adoption of new technology services within marketing technology.
You'll see we have updated the post for different years, so you can see how technology trends have changed as techniques like content marketing and personalization have moved along the Hype Cycle.
[si_guide_block id="81859" title="Download free member resource – Digital Marketing Megatrends" description="Learn how to get an edge in the year ahread by deploying the latest marketing techniques that businesses of all types need to consider to stay competitive."/]

The latest digital marketing Hype Cycle

In December 2018 Gartner published their latest digital marketing and advertising Hype…

Our review showing examples of the latest innovations in digital media, technology, and data to support digital transformation

We love reviewing innovation in marketing. It’s interesting to see ‘what’s hot’ and ‘what’s cool’, but to keep it practical and actionable as we like, we’re equally interested in which communications and transformation techniques will make the biggest commercial improvement for businesses.
A good example of the commercial impact digital technology and media can have is Dominos. I recently heard about the impact of digitization of Dominos from Dave Wild, their UK CEO at Technology for Marketing / E-commerce Expo. Dominos UK only took its first mobile phone order in 2010 when online sales accounted for less than 30% of revenue. Eight years on, Dominos have a market share of more than 50% with digital transactions accounts for more than 80% of sales and the UK smartphone app accounting for more than two-thirds of those…

Digital marketing trends 2019: The Martech landscape in the coming year

When it comes to marketing technology it is important to be ahead of the curve when adopting trends. We are going to look at the landscape of Martech as we move closer to the new year to help you beat that curve. I'm going to give you the top 5 martech trends that will be prominent in 2019 to continue our trends series that Dave Chaffey kicked off earlier this month.
[si_guide_block id="81859" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing megatrends" description="Megatrends across the 5 pillars of marketing today which every business should action."/]

1. Voice is going to continue to rise

The advances made in recent years in the fields of natural language processing, conversation interfaces, automation, and machine learning and deep learning processes have enabled virtual assistants to become increasingly intelligent and useful.
Almost one-third of the…

To prevent further revenue drop, linear television will have to change advertising practices completely

For many years, advertising budgets were gravitating towards the Internet because only this medium could offer media buyers precise targeting and efficiency metrics for campaign analysis. The experts predict that by the end of 2018, the Internet advertising budgets will outweigh linear TV by a whopping $40 billion.
A couple of years ago, the ad market was close to the point of no return and the industry players predicted nothing but a slow demise of TV advertising. In order to prevent further revenue drop, linear television will have to change advertising practices completely.
Let’s find out how the market adapts to the new programmatic-driven addressable TV reality.

What is addressable TV and how it’s different?

Chart of the Day: Brands and Agencies Struggle to Trust AI with Budget Allocation

Business success demands a balanced approach when it comes to decision making – objective analysis and subjective experience. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest tools to improve the scale and quality of our data analysis, but research from Albert Technologies has shed light on what tasks marketers are having difficulty letting go of.
Polling brand and agency marketers on their adoption of AI, both groups agreed that budget allocation was one of their hardest tasks to relinquish. Brand marketers had the most difficulty handing over campaign analysis, while agency marketers wanted to hold on to their audience segmentation.
These attitudes may be the result of AI systems having varied levels of automation. Marketers are likely more open to systems they can use to improve their analysis…

Over half of the leading marketing teams report they are using AI in some way, and 57% of teams believe that AI is necessary to support their strategies and sales goals

It’s no surprise that AI technology is all the rage in nearly every marketing department these days. According to Forrester’s report on AI adoption, a shocking 94% of respondents believed that AI-driven marketing would be very valuable to their company. And yet, over 67% of participants also reported they had concerns and obstacles that stood in the way of AI adoption.

[si_guide_block id="87369" title="Download Premium Resource – AI and Machine Learning for Marketing" description="The guide aims to help businesses of all sizes to apply to their marketing, focusing on Artificial Intelligence. All businesses can now use the services we recommend to implement Machine Learning. The guide explains why, how with an actionable and practical approach."/]

We've been sharing the latest Marketing Technology Landscape map by Scott Brinker, @chiefmartec for several years now. You've almost certainly seen one of the earlier iterations since it has been widely shared. I love it because it's a USEFUL infographic - it prompts marketers to review their current Marketing Technology and take action to improve their Marketing Technology Stack.
When I discuss it with marketers when speaking or training, it certainly has a big impact, not always in a good way... It prompts that "OMG how do I cope?" fear amongst marketers and business owners due to its complexity. But, for me, from a positive POV, it shows the opportunity of the many tools we have available to deliver more relevant, more personalised communications today. It's inspired the Smart Insights team to create our own Martech infographic which includes both insight and operational tools…

Blockchain has revolutionary applications in marketing and will be good news for both publishers and advertisers

Blockchain has been a hot topic in the tech world ever since Bitcoins emerged from obscurity to become the obsession of nerds the world over around 2013. Marketers love finding shiny new technologies to distract them from their day jobs and have enjoyed hopping on bandwagons to prove their down with the latest trends ever since some bright spark realized that newfangled printing press things could be used to churn out flyers to promote the latest in powdered wigs and ruffs.
But whilst marketers have been all over other trends, such as the growth of Snapchat or Live video, like a rash, they've yet to properly 'get' what the blockchain can actually do for them.
I think this is in large part down to two key reasons:
Blockchain is the result of mind-bogglingly clever cryptography and thus…